“Oh, we will surely be caught,” moaned Rose. “Don’t you think, when you rest awhile, you can go on, Nellie, dear? You were always so brave, and so strong.”
“We have got to stop some time, Rose. Why should we go on like this? I am almost dead for sleep, and I feel as if I could go to sleep right here.”
Rose kissed the sad little face, and brushed back the rudely cropped hair, that lay in ringlets on Nellie’s head. “It has been awfully hard, little sister,” she said; “perhaps we had better give up and go back!”
The words seemed to startle the child, who lay on the sand. Instantly she sat bolt upright.
“Go back!” she repeated. “To that place! We might better die here!”
“Then why should we not see the detectives, and tell them all about it? Surely Aunt Delia will not be allowed——”
“But she has been allowed,” insisted Nellie. “Hasn’t she treated us badly for years? And who was there to stop her? Who is there to stop her now?”
“Perhaps those young ladies could help us,” sobbed Rose. “We may have done wrong to run away from them.”
“I did like that dark girl,” assented Nellie, rubbing her aching eyes, “and she did say she would see us again.”
The two sisters were on an isolated patch of the beach and had been trying to make their way to the railroad station. In taking this sandy walk they had avoided the regular traffic path, but the heavy traveling had been too much for the younger one, who was plainly beginning to feel, and show, the signs of her perilous adventure since the day when she ran away from the strawberry patch of Squaton. It was late in the afternoon, almost dusk, but the happy shouts of the excursionists could be heard for a mile along the beach. Here and there groups of boys who had left the crowds were to be seen digging holes in the sand, and capering about with all their energy, to have their very best fun in that one last hour allowed before the big boat would sail away, and carry them off home again.